What I Learned Last Week

Each week I'm going to try and have a segment discussing what I learned as a diabetic in the prior week. Hopefully this will serve as a great resource for people to learn from my experiences and hopefully help them tackle some of the same obstacles I've dealt with. Some of the things I'll have learned will be training related and others will deal with daily diabetes management - let me know if you have any suggestions on how to make this more worthwhile.

Things I learned last week:

1 - The dual wave bolus is a gift from God! For my first 9 months as a diabetic I really didn't understand how to use the dual wave bolus. If I had pizza, a burrito or some other high fat food I would under bolus for the amount of carbs and then give a correction bolus 2 hours later. For high fat, high carb foods, I knew the proper bolus ratio would make me go low and that an adjustment would be required later. After the 72 hours of CGMS hell, Dr. Baker taught me about the dual wave bolus - for the past week I've been having a blast with it (well as much fun as you can have with percentages and time ratios) and my blood sugars have been much more stable. For training I need to incorporate fats into my diet every now and again, this is a great way for me to keep my bs under control while taking in alot of carbs with protein and fats mixed in.

2 - The square wave bolus works awesome on Super Bowl Sunday. First, yesterday's game was one of the top 5 football games I have ever seen. I was 8 years old when I first started playing football and have been around the game ever since. Having watched just about every Giants game of the past 20 years (including Super Bowl 25, in person) I can't believe their performance yesterday. David Tyree's catch in the 4th quarter will go down as one of the 3 greatest plays in NFL post season history and the Giants' front four reminded me of the Big Blue Wrecking Crew from the late 80s/ early 90s - what a game! But this was also my first Super as someone who needed artificial insulin. Yesterday I set my pump for 4 and 1/2 hours of a square wave bolus with 75 grams of carbs - by the end of the game my blood sugar was a terrific 105! Although that impressive number pales in comparison to how well Justin Tuck played.

3 - Stick to a plan during workouts. During both my half marathon and my long run yesterday my blood sugars dropped lower than I ideally like them during workouts. I started the half marathon with a blood sugar of about 125, and yesterday during my run after 1/2 hour my blood sugar was down to 96. In each case I stuck with the plan Lauren laid out for me and trusted my nutritionist to know more about my body than I did. Although I haven't yet gotten used to how the Accel Gels affect my stomach I am starting to believe that the sugars in those gels will get me through the runs. While I have to take a gel or two more than the guy next to me, I at least know that I can keep running as long as I have a supply of carbs.